The Backstreet Boys will always be larger than life to Ariana Madix.
Following her team performance to the group’s “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” on Dancing with the Stars Monday night, the Vanderpump Rules star, 38, opened up about getting the opportunity to meet AJ McLean in rehearsals.
“The Backstreet Boys was my first concert ever, and I went with my dad’s work friend’s family because there was only one ticket and we were all the way at the nosebleeds,” she shared. “And I have these horrible photos of the show and I showed AJ.”
Her partner Pasha Pashkov chimed in playfully, “You can’t see anything.”
Madix added, “Because literally, you’re like, ‘That could be him, or that could be him, or that.’ They look like tiny little ants, but to me, it was the most incredible thing.”
Her love for the Backstreet Boys didn’t stop there, she admitted, “I actually chased Nick Carter through the airport once as a child.”
On Cheryl Burke’s Sex, Lies and Spray Tans podcast, McLean, 45, revealed that Madix had a “full freakout” when she made him at rehearsals.
“When I walked in the room, none of them had any idea,” he shared. “She like almost collapsed. She’s so sweet.”
“She showed me — and this is for all the Gen Zs out there that don’t know what a photograph is. It’s an actual printed photograph. She had printed photos from the Millennium tour. She carries them with her. Which is so sweet. Well, she also had them for her [interviews] and some of her stuff for her package so she had them not knowing I was going to be there.”
In addition to the team performance, Madix and Pashkov also performed a Cha Cha to “I’m a Slave 4 U” by Britney Spears on Music Video Night.
She told co-host Julianne Hough, “I’ve been practicing that choreography since 2001 in my bedroom, so to live out my Britney pop star dreams tonight, I can die happy.”
Following the show, Madix told that the 41-year-old pop singer “gives me so much life.”
“Since day one, she’s given me life. I just think that she is so incredible,” she said. “She has a fire that I don’t think anybody else can do quite like her.”
She continued, “And I’ve been a fan through thick and thin, the dark times, the good times, all of it, and I always feel like her song ‘Stronger’ — I just feel like everything makes her stronger, and so I just try to emulate that in life.”
Dancing with the Stars airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC and Disney+.
